Open Book Alliance to oppose Google Book deal

Relevant Results - CNET News Industry group fights Google's attempt to digitize copyrighted materials: "With less than two weeks remaining until a key deadline in the Google Books settlement, Google's opposition is circling the wagons.

The Open Book Alliance, a consortium that includes nonprofit author groups, library institutions, and Google rivals Amazon, Microsoft, and Yahoo, launched Wednesday to 'insist that any mass book digitization and distribution effort be open and competitive.' As reported last week by the Wall Street Journal, the group will be led by Peter Brantley of Internet Archive and veteran antitrust lawyer Gary Reback of Carr & Ferrell.

Google's proposed settlement with book rights holders last October gave it the sole legal authority to scan and distribute digital books that are still in copyright but out of print, and library groups and privacy activists have been up in arms ever since."

After the Transistor, a Leap Into the Microcosm - NYTimes.com

After the Transistor, a Leap Into the Microcosm - NYTimes.com: "Dr. Ross, an I.B.M. researcher, is growing a crop of mushroom-shaped silicon nanowires that may one day become a basic building block for a new kind of electronics. Nanowires are just one example, although one of the most promising, of a transformation now taking place in the material sciences as researchers push to create the next generation of switching devices smaller, faster and more powerful than today’s transistors."

"The reason that many computer scientists are pursuing this goal is that the shrinking of the transistor has approached fundamental physical limits. Increasingly, transistor manufacturers grapple with subatomic effects, like the tendency for electrons to “leak” across material boundaries. The leaking electrons make it more difficult to know when a transistor is in an on or off state, the information that makes electronic computing possible. They have also led to excess heat, the bane of the fastest computer chips."

Microsoft Research Keeps Dreaming Big

Microsoft Research Keeps Dreaming Big - BusinessWeek: "Rick Rashid, head of Microsoft's (MSFT) research arm, oversees 850 of the brainiest people in the technology industry. But he doesn't push them to help the Microsoft groups working on the next Windows operating system or upcoming Xbox. Instead, he gives researchers wide leeway to pursue their own interests and write papers about ideas that may not pay off for 10 or 20 years—if at all. 'We're about doing things that frankly people may not want,' says the 57-year-old Rashid, tilting back in the desk chair in his modest office on Microsoft's Redmond (Wash.) campus. 'The point of a basic research group is really to do the things you don't know you'll need.'"

Using Flash Memory to Increase Performance

SDSC Dashes Forward with New Flash Memory Computer System: "“Dash’s use of flash memory for fast file-access and swap space – as opposed to spinning discs that have much slower latency or I/O times – along with vSMP capabilities for large shared memory will facilitate scientific research,” said Michael Norman, interim director of SDSC. “Today’s high-performance instruments, simulations and sensor networks are creating a deluge of data that presents formidable challenges to store and analyze; challenges that Dash helps to overcome.”"

Open Source Approach to DNA Privacy

American Friends of Tel Aviv University: Open Source DNA: "In the chilling science fiction movie Gattaca, Ethan Hawke stars as a man with 'inferior genes' who assumes another's genetic identity to escape a dead-end future. The 1997 film illustrates the very real fear swirling around today's genome research — fear that private genetic information could be used negatively against us."

"Working with colleagues at the University of California in Berkeley, Dr. Halperin devised a mathematical formula that can be used to protect genetic privacy while giving researchers much of the raw data they need to do pioneering medical research. Reported in this month's issue of Nature Genetics, the tool could keep millions of research dollars-worth of DNA information available to scientists."

Not all robots are electromechanical...

Bristol UWE - NewsBuilding biological robots: "Scientists at the University of the West of England are to design the first ever biological robot using mould."

"Researchers have received a Leverhulme Trust grant worth £228,000 to develop the amorphous non-silicon biological robot, plasmobot, using plasmodium, the vegetative stage of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum, a commonly occurring mould which lives in forests, gardens and most damp places in the UK. The Leverhulme Trust funded research project aims to design the first every fully biological (no silicon components) amorphous massively-parallel robot."

Exoskeletons enhance natural physical abilities

August 2009 Newsletter | CITRIS: "In the 1986 sci-fi classic Aliens, Sigourney Weaver’s character defeats her nemesis with a huge exoskeleton device that she operates from inside with buttons and a joystick. Twenty-two years later, Tony Stark steps inside Iron Man, a much sleeker and more agile version of a wearable robot. How was Iron Man manipulated? Possibly with sensors that could read electrical signals coming from the brain with an EEG-like device embedded in the helmet or implanted into the motor cortex of the brain. Or maybe it was a simpler touch interface that would simply read the contact force applied by the body itself and amplify or convert its motions into movement of the robotic exoskeleton."

"All of those approaches are feasible and, in fact, being investigated or implemented by engineers around the world in efforts to explore alternative ways to operate the coming generation of wearable machines."